A Contemporary Theatre's April-November 1999 season will offer Seattle premieres of Warren Leight's Side Man and Alan Ayckbourn's Communicating Doors, plays currently being presented on Broadway and Off Broadway, respectively.

A Contemporary Theatre's April-November 1999 season will offer Seattle premieres of Warren Leight's Side Man and Alan Ayckbourn's Communicating Doors, plays currently being presented on Broadway and Off Broadway, respectively.

The nonprofit resident theatre in Seattle announced five of six shows for its 1999 season. Arthur Miller's The Crucible will open the season in late April 1999. The sixth production will be announced later.

Also on the slate is the world premiere of David Wiltse's thriller, Temporary Help, about a husband and wife Nebraska farm couple playing psychological games with a virile farmhand. ACT artistic director Gordon Edelstein directed a workshop of the play while he was artistic director of Connecticut's Long Wharf Theatre.

The fourth production of the season will be the chamber musical, Goblin Market, by Polly Pen and Peggy Harmon. The fantastical show, set in a children's nursery, is about two grown Victorian-era sisters who relive memories of their youth. No dates or artistic staff and casting have been announced.

Leight's Side Man is the story a dysfunctional jazz musician and the wreckage he creates in his marriage and family. It began Off Broadway in spring 1998, moved to the Roundabout Theatre and then moved again to the John Golden Theatre (set to officially reopen Nov. 8) with the recasting of Christian Slater as the musician's son. Michael Mayer directed the NYC stagings. Communicating Doors, a time-travel comedy-thriller, began previews at the Variety Arts Theatre Off Broadway, opened Aug. 20. Anne Bobby was announced to replace original star Mary Louise Parker Nov. 10. Parker exits Doors Nov. 8.